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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER APRIL 1990
^^^ NEVER RELEASED OFFICIAL TI MODULES - PART 5
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Charles Good
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group
I'll bet you thought that last month's PART 4 would be
the last of this series. Well, so did I. However, some
additional "never released" software has been made available
to me (thanks in part to Gary Taylor of the Pittsburg UG),
and I have found some more literature references to the
never released material. The day that this article was
being polished up for the last time, prior to newsletter
publication, I received some more never released official TI
software in the mail from Gary Taylor. This means that next
month there will be a "Part 6" to this series.
SOME MORE HISTORY:
This is an "official" description of WINGWAR
(described in part 4 of this series) contained in a booklet
that was packaged in a TI module purchased in early 1984.
The booklet says "copyright 1983 TI" and bears the number
1056414-1. "You're a great dragon in a world of primordial
beasts, magic crystals, and powerful demons. Battle these
menacing foes with fireballs, inner strength, and superior
strategy. Speech Synthesis optional."
The SUMMER 1983 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW in Chicago,
as described in the August 1983 issue of COMPUTE! may go
down in history as the show where the most "orphans" were
initially introduced. Computers first displayed for the
public at this show include the Coleco Adam, the Atari 600XL
800XL 1400XL and 1450XLD, the North American version of
the Sinclair ZX Spectum called the Timex Sinclair 2048, and
the Mattel Aquarius and Aquarius II. Some of these machines
never actually made it to market. The rest are now all
orphans. The same August 1983 COMPUTE! article talks about
the rumored near release of the TI 99/4B. "The 99/4B, they
say, will fall somewhere between the 99/4A and the 99/8 in
features and price." COMPUTE! says that at this Summer 1983
show, "TI introduced....six educational packages, including
three games based on E.T. the Extra Terrestrial." What were
these E.T. games? Were they really released, or just
displayed, or perhaps only mentioned in promotional
literature given out at the show? Read on.
This comes from page 35 of the June 1983 issue of 99ER
HOME COMPUTER MAGAZINE. "The remaining 5 (educational)
packages for 4th quarter release include 3 E.T. based
educational software games from Looking Glass Software, and
2 vocabulary/grammar games from Development Learning
materials Inc. All game and education cartridges carry a
$39.95 SRP." I wonder if one of these DLM modules is VERB
VIPER, described in part 2 of this series. The only Looking
Glass Software educational game that I know of is ET AT SEA.
The ET game module, described later in this article, is an
in house TI game (non-educational) that does not mention
Looking Glass software. Does anyone know anything about the
other two Looking Glass "E.T. based educational software
games"?
This quote concerning TI's own E.T. module is from the
INTERNATIONAL 99/4A USER GROUP NEWSLETTER dated Nov. 15,
1982. "TI is expected to announce a new Command Module
which will feature the familiar E.T. space creature. The
new E.T. Command Module is due to be ready some time in the
second quarter of 1983."
PINOCCHIO'S GREAT ESCAPE:
According to the title screen, this is another "WALT
DISNEY PERSONAL COMPUTER SOFTWARE DESIGNED EXCLUSIVELY FOR
THE TEXAS INSTRUMENTS COMPUTER." No copyright date is
indicated, but I suspect that the date would be 1983. This
is a language arts module designed to teach children how to
recognize and pronounce long and short vowel sounds in
printed words. Speech Synthesis is optional but highly
recommended.
Pinocchio is in a cage suspended from the ceiling. His
friend Jimminey Cricket has to get him out by making a
stairway to the cage, climbing the stairs, and unlocking the
cage's padlock. Each correct answer adds one additional
stair.
The first menu says:
CHOOSE THE VOWEL SOUND:
1) SHORT VOWEL SOUNDS
2) LONG VOWEL SOUNDS
Whichever choice you make, you are then advanced to the
second menu:
CHOOSE THE LEVEL OF GAME PLAY
1) BEGINNING
2) INTERMEDIATE
3) ADVANCED
When you make your choice of difficulty level, the game
begins. If you choose long vowel sounds, Pinocchio
suspended in his cage may say "Jimminey, choose the word
with the long o sound, as in goal." Five words are then
displayed, such as NIGHT BLACK TRUE FLASH and HOSE. You
move Jimminey next to the one correct word (using the EX
keys or the joystick) and then press Q or the fire button.
Jimminey touches the indicated word with his umbrella. If
the guess is correct, Pinocchio asks for another vowel sound
and 5 new word choices are displayed. You always get a
different selection of 5 word choices because the module has
a vocabulary of 1000 words, each 2-5 letters in length. I
know this to be true because I used my GramKracker to
display the contents of the GROMS in order to read and count
the words.
For each game Jimminey gets 3 umbrellas. The game is
over if all 3 are used up before Pinocchio is released from
the cage. You get points for each correct answer, and
another stair is added to the staircase leading to
Pinocchio's cage. If Jimmeney guesses incorrectly, you are
told that the guess is incorrect and given unlimited
additional opportunities to guess the correct word with no
loss of points or umbrellas. Each attempt is timed, with a
timer displayed at the top of the screen. If time runs out
there is no loss of points or umbrellas. Instead, the
correct answer is indicated and you are then presented with
another problem complete with five new words from which to
choose.
The three difficulty levels differ from each other in
two respects. At each successive difficulty level there are
increasing numbers of mice running around and they move
faster. If Jimminey touches a mouse while attempting to
touch a word with his umbrella, he loses the umbralla. This
is the only way to lose umbrellas and possibly terminate the
game unsuccessfully. Also, the word choices are more
difficult at each successive difficulty level. At the
BEGINNING level, there is only one word displayed that
contains the correct vowel, so selecting the correct answer
is a piece of cake. At INTERMEDIATE there are either two or
three of the 5 displayed words with the correct vowel, but
only one of these has the desired vowel sound. At the
ADVANCED level all of the displayed words include the
desired vowel but again only one of these words has the
correct vowel sound.
After 6 correct answers the stairway is complete.
Pinocchio says, "You did it Jimminey Cricket, you did it!"
Jimminey climbs the stairs and unlocks the padlock.
Pinocchio comes down to the bottom of the screen and dances
to the music singing "I'm free! I'm free!" When you get
tired of watching him dance press <enter>. Pinocchio bows,
and you are given the opportunity to play another similar
game or return to the first menu to select a different set
of paramaters for the next game.
This module truely is "self teaching". As long as the
student is capable of reading the 2-5 letter words that make
up the possible choices, the student should be able learn
all about long and short vowel sounds from scratch without
intervention from a human teacher. Remember, I said that
when time runs out the correct answer is indicated and there
is no penalty. Students unfamiliar with the concept of long
and short vowel sounds can just sit in front of the monitor
as the computer pronounces (using speech) vowel sounds and
then correctly shows words that contain the just pronounced
sound.
The module provides rewards for positive effort without
penalizing mistakes. The only way to mess up and terminate
the game without rescuing Pinocchio is to allow Jimminey to
touch too many mice while trying to guess the correct
answer. This is strictly an eye/hand coordination thing
unrelated to getting correct answers and learning about long
and short vowel sounds.
I give PINOCCHIO'S GREAT ESCAPE my highest rating. Its
use of color bit map graphics, music, and sound are
excellent. The game is fun. A lot of careful thought went
into the "self teaching" design of this module.
STARSHIP PEGASUS:
Copyright 1983 by Milton Bradley Co.
This game reminds me of some of the "junk extended
basic" games that form part of the early history of the TI,
games such as those in the early part of the libraries of
the International Users Group or the Amnion Free Access
Library. In speed, graphics, and the use of sprites,
Starship Pegasus really does resemble an extended basic game
rather than an assembly language game.
Your starship is in the middle of the screen and there
it stays. You have guns top/bottom and left/right which you
can shoot with the joysticks or arrow keys. If you shoot a
second bullet before the previously fired bullet goes off
the edge of the screen, than the previous bullet disappears!
Only one of your bullets can be on the screen at a time.
The bad guys, looking very much like magnified XB sprites,
wander onto and off the screen using more or less random
motion. They shoot at you and you shoot at them with your
four fixed position guns firing outward from the center of
the screen. If you get hit with a bad guy bullet you
explode and the game ends. You are then given the
opportunity to play again.
BORING!^^I can understand why Milton Bradley never
released this one. In fact, considering the neat stuff that
Milton Bradley has produced for the TI (such as the MBX
system and associated modules), I am surprised that the
company would allow its name to be used with this game in
the first place.
E.T.
Copyright 1982 by Texas Instruments. The XB module
dump version of this game calls it ET GO HOME.
This is yet another in a long line of "frogger" type
game. In fact, in addition to crossing the freeway etc., ET
must also hitch a ride on a frog in order to get from the
bottom to the top of the screen. You need to get three
different ET's to the top of the screen in order to win the
game. Each ET is deposited in a bicycle which then moves to
the space ship. Each attempt is timed from the "press any
key to begin" to the successful placing of an ET on his
bicycle.
I think the "frogger" theme can only be taken so far
before there is nothing new in the game. There are several
extended basic "frogger" type games for the TI in our group
library that are, in my opinion, every bit as good as TI's
E.T. If I were a game enthusiast, I wouldn't spend my
money on E.T. Probably TI realized this too and that is
probably why ET was not released in the second quarter of
1983 as was originally expected.
.PL 1